Heh. Seriously, there are some nice craft brewed and/or local beers in the States I've enjoyed, but the Miller/Bud/Coors stuff? Not so much. Different thread, however. Enjoy your trip...bring a fishing rod and console yourself with freshly grilled, free dinners!

To follow up on this discussion, I purchased the Canadian BSBCharts for Georgian Bay (CEN06) and have the CD. However, on the CD packaging it states that the computer required is one of either WINDOWS XP, WINDOWS VISTA, or WINDOWS 7. I plan to use these charts with POLAR NAVY NS on my MacOS computer, and I would like to know if the required WINDOWS operating system is just a pro-forma notice for the majority of users so they don't think this is going to work on Windows95.

Can I install these CHS BSB V4 digital charts on a MacOS computer and use them with POLAR NAVY?

I don't want to break the seal on the package, as it warns there is no refund once that has occurred.

It's natural as boaters to want free marinenavigation charts. Obviously every country manages its budgets differently. Canada charges for these charts as well as navaid use for aviation, high taxes on enginefuel etc. The often quoted words... "free health care" is incorrect and should not be used in the same sentence.

After purchasing the CHS digital charts and activating them, I received a nice email from CHS explaining that I would now have access to an FTP site where, for the next year, I could download updated chart information. The email included credentials for accessing the FTP site, so, naturally, I visited it to see if there were any updates for my 2011 charts.

The CHS folks seem to have this very nicely figured out. They know what charts you have and how long your update privileges will exist, and on the FTP site each user has a home directory with aliases or links to the appropriate resources for their particular chart packages.

However, I think I have run into another brick wall with my MacOS computer, because the update packages appear to be in the form of .EXE files, which I suspect will work well on a Windows operating system, but may not be very useful with MacOS.

All is not lost for the MacOS user, however, as I think somewhere in the fine print it says that CHS will send you a new CD with updates on a one-time basis during your period of license. This may be my best option--wait until next year, just before my license expires, and get the updated charts on CD.

I suspect that updates are self-extracting archives. If so - it may be possible to extract charts in a Windows machine (or virtual Windows box in your Mac), then copy charts from C:\ChartKit to your Mac chart installation directory.
Since chart keys have already been installed, you could simply use "Add Directory" option to have PolarView reload these charts.

That's my guess anyway - might be worth trying.

__________________Polar Navy - because life is too short to use ugly navigation software

As brak suggested, the Windows binary file (.EXE) provided by the CHS as their BSB V4 chart updater was a self-extracting archive. I do have a Windows XP installation on my MacOS laptop, so I was able to run the .EXE file in my virtual machine and extract its payload.

The output of the .EXE was a complicated directory structure of files, more directories, and more executable (.EXE) files. I surmise that the new executable files are just simple "wizard" routines to install the extracted charts.

I did not explore this further because I am about to leave for a cruise in Georgian Bay, and I did not want to muck-up my current chart installation just before I actually need to use it. I will experiment more with this when I get back.

More update on the BSB Charts for Canada and their Windows-PC-based updater:

When I downloaded the chart updater from the CHS FTP site, I put it in a directory in my MacOS "Documents" path. From there I ran the Windows-executible self extractor (in the Windows environment). This created a new sub-directory called

2011_CEN06_20101030_20110429

and in this directory there were a many files, mainly .INI files and some more Windows executable files that looked like install-wizards. However, most importantly, there was a new directory called "BSBCHART" which contained many new files in either .CAP or .BSB extensions. I assumed these were the updated charts.

I copied all of the files--the new chart updates--from this new "BSBCHART" directory to my main BSB chart folder, which is called "Charts" on my set-up, and is in my MacOS user directory. (Just to make sure I wouldn't blow up the installation, I made a back-up of "Charts" before proceeding.)

This seems to have worked, at least it has not blown up the installation. I have been poking around the charted regions trying to see if there were some new updates included that were not there before, but it is hard to tell. As far as I can see, I didn't blow up the old installation and the new charts are in the main BSB directory, and thus I conclude it worked. It is a bit of a nuisance for a MacOS user, but not too hard to accomplish.